Seduced in Shadow Read Online Free Page A

said to her. “Now.”
    “Ellie, get in the car.” Antonin practically growled the words but he never took his eyes off the ranger.
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    “Miss, why don’t you let me take you up to the ranger station? You can call someone to come get you.” At the ranger’s cold voice, all her senses went into red alert.
    “Ellie, get in the car!” Antonin insisted.
    “I can’t,” she cried. She was frustrated and beginning to hyperventilate. Something about that ranger was terribly wrong. And something about Antonin suddenly felt terribly right. At that moment, she knew she would be safe with him. She could feel it in her gut. “The door won’t open.”
    In the blink of an eye, Antonin vanished…only to reappear behind the park ranger.
    From the look on the other’s man face, he was as shocked as she was.
    Her mouth dropped open. Surely she had just imagined that.
    Antonin grabbed the ranger around the neck and squeezed. The other man’s lips worked but no sound emerged. When the ranger dropped to the ground in a heap, the world went dark around the edges of her vision.
    Ellie blinked, trying to bring her rapidly blurring sight into focus…and found Antonin standing by her side. She tried to scream but couldn’t find the breath.
    “Ellie, don’t pass out on me now. We have to get out of here.”
    “What— How— I don’t—”
    “Ellie, breathe. Deep breaths, in and out. Come on. We gotta get out of here before he wakes up.”
    That snapped her out of the panic attack. She had to get in the car and get away from here. Everything was jumbled, didn’t make sense.
    When Antonin reached for her, the world went dark.
    * * * * *
    The fear on Ellie’s face right before she fainted punched at Antonin’s gut. He’d completely mishandled this.
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    But he didn’t have time to obsess over that now. He needed to get her away from here. He’d had to nearly suffocate the fake park ranger and work a heavy-duty binding spell to keep him down. The guy was Mal . Antonin could smell it on him like a foul stench.
    Ellie lay pliant in his arms, her body warm and soft. Lifting her against his chest, he let her head fall against his shoulder. She felt good there.
    “What are you doing?” the doe asked. “Have you hurt her?”
    Antonin shook his head. “She’s fine. Just passed out. You could have given me a little warning about the company.”
    The doe snorted. “I did not hear him coming. He is evil, that one.”
    Undoing the locking spell the other man must have put on the car while they were still in the forest, Antonin walked around and slid her into the passenger seat, buckling her in. “Yeah, I know that.” On the driver’s side, he grabbed the keys off the ground where Ellie had dropped them then waved to the doe. “I wouldn’t want to be around when he wakes up.”
    “I do not plan to be. Will she recover?”
    “She’ll be fine. I won’t let anything happen to her.”
    Well, he certainly hoped nothing happened to her. Justin would have his head if it did.
    The doe snorted again and shook her head. “Be sure you do not.” Then she hopped off through the trees.
    Folding himself into the driver’s seat of her tiny car, Antonin stole a quick glance at Ellie, his gaze locking on those gorgeous lips, slightly parted and glistening. He knew he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if anything happened to her.
    First things first though. Get the hell out of Dodge.
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    Pulling a U-turn, Antonin drove her little Miata as fast as he dared back to town.
    Back to what he hoped was safety. Cam would have to pick up the company Audi he’d hidden on the other side of the street when he’d followed her here this morning.
    Antonin wasn’t as familiar with the city of Reading as he would have liked. He’d only been in town a little more than a week, not long enough to find all the nooks and crannies, the hidden nodes and camouflaged hot spots that lurked in a city